We Are The Living Memory Of Rugby.

They say the average age of a rugby fan today is 36.

Good. Let the young have their stats and their algorithms.

Let them chase highlights on phones and argue about law changes in comment sections.

We were there before any of that existed.

We are the sixty somethings who stood on the concrete terraces at Cardiff Arms Park when the rain came sideways and the singing still drowned it out.

We are the ones who watched Jonah Lomu announce himself to the world in ’95 and felt the earth actually shift under our feet.

We remember when the Five Nations became Six and when the game we loved turned professional overnight, and we argued in clubhouses for years about whether that was progress or betrayal (most of us still haven’t fully decided).

We saw JPR run like a gazelle, Blanco dance like a devil, and Campese do things with a rugby ball that should have been illegal.

We were in the stands the day Wilko dropped that goal, and we were old enough to know how many ghosts he carried on his boot when he struck it.

We watched the Springboks come back into the light in ’95 and understood, deeper than any documentary ever could, what the game can mean to a country.

Our voices are slower now, our knees creak on the steps up to the stand, and we might need a minute to remember the exact year of a certain match.

But we remember the smell of wintergreen and wet wool, the taste of warm beer passed hand to hand in the crowd, the way 50,000 people could fall into a stunned, beautiful silence when something impossible happened on the pitch.

We are not relics.

We are the living archive.

Every time we tell a twenty year-old about the time Colin Meads played on with a broken arm, or how Michael Lynagh stole the ’91 World Cup in the dying seconds, or the day a muddy club ground in the middle of nowhere produced a future Lion… we are doing sacred work.

We are passing the soul of the game across generations the way it was always meant to be passed, mouth to ear, heart to heart.

The game will always need new fans, new players, new ideas.

But it will die without memory.

And memory lives in us.

So let the average age be 36.

Let the kids have their analytics and their craft IPAs and their clean stadium seats.

We’ll be over here in the corner of the bar, or under the old oak tree by the clubhouse, or in the cheap seats we’ve had for forty years, telling the stories that can’t be found on YouTube.

We’ll keep the flame until someone younger is ready to carry it.

Because rugby isn’t just a sport.

It’s a conversation that started long before any of us were born and, if we do our job right, will still be going long after we’re gone.

And as long as there’s one old bugger, or woman left who can still tell you what it felt like when McBride’s ’74 Lions were invincible, or when the crowd sang “Flower of Scotland” so loud the stadium shook…the game will be all right.

We’re still here.

Still watching.

Still remembering.

And that, more than any marketing campaign or shiny new tournament, is what keeps rugby alive.

See you at the ground.

I’ll be the one with the grey hair and the stories.

Mark.